Winter Looms: The Web’s Best Snowfall Time-Lapse Videos

When winter rears its frosty head and a big snowstorm hits, amateur photographers, professionals and hobbyists around the world break out their cameras, sit back in the warmth of their homes and let their gear capture the gradual accumulation of snow.

Recording the build-up of the frigid, fluffy white stuff through time-lapse videos has become increasingly popular in the past few years with more advanced cameras becoming cheaper. More and more amateurs are creating dramatic videos that show the accumulation of snow on the ground -- speeding up hours of a winter storm into minutes or seconds.

We scoured the web to find the most dramatic snowfall time-lapse videos and chose six of our favorites. Each video is accompanied by commentary from its creator.

Above:

Washington, D.C. Blizzard of 2010 Time-Lapse

“Shots began on 2/5/2010 around 5pm. I have a Nikon D300 SLR with an internal interval timer. I set it to take a shot every 15 minutes. As far as technique, I knew the light levels were going to change throughout the night and that auto-focus would be problematic as well as cause extra strain on the battery. I pre-focused on the chairs in the center of the frame, then I set the camera to manual focus.

I relied on the camera to determine exposure and locked the aperture and allowed the internal light meter to adjust shutter speeds accordingly. I set the camera to spot metering and told the metering system to meter on the snow just to the right of the table, as that would be a consistent location to determine brightness. I ran out of battery power at about 6am the next morning, which gave a nice 12 hour time-lapse. In terms of snowfall, we received around 25 inches in 12 hours -- some drifts around the house were close to 3 feet”.

-- Dave Wujcik, Oakton, Virginia
Video courtesy Dave Wujcik

Snowpocalypse Time-Lapse

“I shot this time-lapse with a Canon PowerShot D10 loaded up with the Canon Hack Development Kit software (CHDK) from http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK. This video was shot in February 2011. For this series, I shot high-resolution frames (3264x2448) with 25 to 45 seconds between the shots depending on the video and then imported the individual shots into Sony Vegas and re-sized the shots. I had the camera set to manual focus, but auto exposure with auto flash.

The on-board camera battery only last about 3 hours, so I ended up making a cool outdoor battery setup as the camera is waterproof and I can set it up and run it for at least a couple of days non-stop”.

-- Alex Ivie, Northwest Arkansas
Video courtesy Alex Ivie

Snow Accumulation in Jersey City

“I shot this from my window in my garden level apartment in Jersey City. I used a Canon 40D with a timed shutter that I got on eBay with a 50mm lens on a tripod. You can actually see the reflection in the window at the top looking back into my apartment as it gets darker outside. I was kind of bummed about that but I still like the way it came out”.

-- Chris Lees, Jersey City, New Jersey
Video courtesy Chris Lees

Winter Storm Time-Lapse

“My set up is this: Panasonic HVX200 shooting to P2 cards. Original capture was set at 1 frame every 5 seconds at 720p. The final web versions may have been sped up even more to get it to a 30 second clip. Total snowfall for the video was approximately 18-24 inches, although the time-lapse doesn't show that much snow on the deck”.

-- Conrad Weaver, Conjostudios
Video courtesy Conrad Weaver

Snow Drift Time-Lapse

“I setup my Nikon D90 DSLR on a tripod about two feet off the ground, pointed out my sliding glass door to our back patio. I wanted to have a decent perspective on the coming snowfall and they were predicting about 18-24 inches. I had no idea I was also going to be able to catch a huge snowdrift.

I used my wide-angle (14mm) lens, wanting to capture as much of the surrounding area as possible, opened up to f/4. I attached my intervalometer to the D90 and set it to snap a still photo every two minutes. I began shooting on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 1st around 1 p.m. and continued through the night into early Wednesday morning, February 2nd around 6 a.m. All total, I captured just over 500 photos over the course of about 17 hours. I then compiled them all together into the resulting time-lapse video.

The blizzard, which came to be known as the Groundhog Day blizzard of 2011, ended up accumulating the third-largest total amount of snowfall for Chicago, with just over 20 inches”.

-- Josh Schmanke, Chicago, Illinois
Video courtesy Josh Schmanke

January 2011 Snowfall Time-Lapse

“Hearing there would be a blizzard on December 26, I put a Canon Rebel DSLR on a tripod with a remote timer that would take a picture automatically every five minutes. I set it up with the Orange bucket that has inches marked off as yellow dots, but that was soon swallowed, and as you can see. I spent the rest of the night clearing away snow so the clock would still be visible. I stuck the yardstick in when I realized it was going to be much higher than anyone estimated.

It went viral that day and next; for much of the day hits/plays were coming in at 100,000 an hour, with 3.5 million views total. Every network called to use it: CBS, NBC, ABC, Weather Channel, CNN, even the BBC called to put it worldwide.

I keep my time lapse gear simple: an inexpensive DLSR, a good but cheap tripod, and a third party timer remote anyone can buy on Amazon for 20 bucks”.